Once upon a time, the Diablo series defined the hack-and-slash action role-playing game, setting the standard by which all games in the genre were measured. Now, Diablo III feels more familiar than genre-defining, relying on refining the same hooks that have always made this series so compelling. But what a refinement it is. The controls are responsive and pleasurable; the diversity of character classes and skill customization options is impressive; and the constant stream of gold and treasure you earn is irresistible. Blizzard has the recipe for crafting a habit-forming loot-driven action RPG down to a science, and in Diablo III, the results of that recipe are more exciting and more addictive than they've ever been.

You begin your quest just after what appears to be a flaming star falls from the heavens and crashes into the cathedral in Tristram, the doomed town where the events of Diablo took place. This cosmic occurrence has the unfortunate side effect of reanimating the dead, and the people of New Tristram find themselves besieged by corpses long ago put to rest. Diablo III's story is unremarkable, but it weaves in plenty of references to and appearances by characters from earlier games and enriches the established lore of the series. Fans of Diablo and Diablo II will immediately feel drawn into this world.

You certainly don't need any familiarity with the series to jump right into Diablo III, however. If you've played earlier games, you'll likely get even more out of Diablo III--the music that plays in the New Tristram area may send nostalgic shivers down your spine--but the gameplay is welcoming and easy to grasp for vets and newcomers alike. You choose one of five character classes, and though they become quite distinct at later levels, they all start with nothing but basic offensive skills that are performed with clicks of the mouse.

Let no barrel survive!

That may sound dull, but in fact the rate at which you acquire new skills is part of what makes Diablo III so hard to pull yourself away from. You very quickly open up slots for new types of abilities; if you're playing as a demon hunter, for instance, you begin with a basic archery attack, but you can soon supplement this with resource-draining skills like a rapid fire ability, enemy-slowing caltrops, acrobatic somersaults that can get you away from enemies, and other techniques.

These skills are divided into distinct categories--primary, secondary, defensive, and so on--and by default, you can have only one skill from each category equipped at a time. This is a sensible restriction if you're a novice player, because it helps ensure that your character is well rounded, with a complementary assortment of abilities. However, if you prefer a greater level of character customization, you can turn on what's called elective mode. With this on, you can opt to equip whichever skills you want in your available slots, rather than being limited to choosing one from each category. But if you do this, be mindful of your character's resource pool. If you select two monk skills that cost spirit (the monk's resource) and no skills that generate spirit, you're going to have some trouble slaughtering the legions of hell spawn you encounter.

Maybe his life would have turned out differently if his parents hadn't named him Tyrant.

Choosing one skill always means not choosing another, since your number of available key bindings is always equal to the number of active skill categories you've unlocked. (Once you've unlocked all six skill categories for your class, for instance, you have just six bindings to which you can link skills.) But you can change your selected skills at any time, giving you free rein to tinker with your abilities until you find a combination you're happy with.

You never sink points into skills to make them more effective, so you never have to worry that you're not making the best choices. Rather, as you level up, you unlock both new skills and new runes you can apply to existing skills. From level 13 on, for instance, witch doctors can apply the numbing dart rune to their poison dart attack, which adds a slowing effect to this offensive ability. You can eventually unlock a total of six runes for each active ability, though you can have only one rune at a time activated on any ability. This system prevents you from squandering your character's growth by sinking points into skills that leave you ill-equipped for challenges to come, and lets you customize your abilities on the fly to better tackle the challenges you're currently facing.

It's not all about unlocking skills, however. It's about employing those skills to slaughter the monsters you encounter as you travel the world, and collecting the loot the fiends drop. This is where Diablo III's habit-forming pleasures lie. The randomly generated environments encourage exploration; you never know what treasure (or what powerful foe) you might find down each cathedral hallway or desert trail. Enticing art design draws you into these realms. In and around New Tristram, a foreboding mist hangs in the air, and ancient ruins crumble as you visit places long undisturbed. In the lands around the elegant city of Caldeum, you traverse stark landscapes of cracked earth and bone.

You explore ornate, musty manors and spider-infested caves. You make your way through rat-infested sewers and emerge into a dusky, teeming oasis. And though the inspiration it draws from The Lord of the Rings is a bit obvious, a setting in the game's fourth act effectively makes you feel like part of a desperate, large-scale war between humanity and the forces of hell. Just when you've had your fill of one region, it's time to move on to another, and each location is so different from the one that preceded it that you feel as if your quest to rid the land of evil is taking you across a vast and varied land.

As diverse as these locations are, they all have one thing in common: they're crawling with monsters. In the early stages of your quest, most monsters fall to your attacks without putting up much of a fight, though if you get swarmed, you might still need to keep an eye on your health. (Unlike in Diablo II, you can't spam health potions to immediately counter any damage you suffer; potions have a cooldown timer, requiring you to play a bit more cautiously.) Your attacks look mighty and effective, which makes the simple act of unleashing them feel empowering. The demon hunter's huge chakrams weave through the air, blades spinning; the barbarian's hard-hitting attacks can send foes flying.

After your time in gloomy New Tristram, the city of Caldeum is bright and inviting.

Without fail, you're rewarded for mowing down monsters with gold and gear. This is typical of the series and the genre, but it's handled here as well as it's ever been. You never feel like you're being showered with riches and items you haven't earned, nor that you're having to slog through too many foes to earn anything significant. Loot is doled out at a pace that makes your victories fulfilling and makes fighting the next group of foes lurking in the shadows ahead nigh irresistible.

The way your rewards emerge into the world is rewarding in itself; slay an elite monster, and coins and items pour onto the ground, making you feel like you've just won a jackpot in Vegas. Sometimes, the gear is junk so low in value that it's not even worth picking up. But you never know when you're going to stumble on a weapon or piece of armor that's superior to your current equipment, making you more capable of facing the coming hordes. Even if something isn't worth using, it's often worth grabbing, either to sell or to have it salvaged by the blacksmith in town for materials that can be used to craft other items.

Weapons function in Diablo III a bit oddly, though, and that may take some getting used to. Often, you may elect to have your primary skill be something that isn't weapon-based. You may choose the demon hunter's grenade attack, for instance, or the wizard's magic missile spell. Although these skills don't involve your characters actually using whatever weapons they're holding in their hands, the damage of your equipped weapon still comes into play. In other words, all other things being equal, a wizard's magic missile spell does more damage if she's holding a club that does 12 damage than if she's holding a dagger that does 10 damage. It's a system that makes more gear useful to more classes, but that usefulness comes at the expense of typical fantasy RPG logic.

Scrolls of Town Portal are gone, replaced by a spell you can cast at any time.

If you haven't yet found the perfect helm, boots, or crossbow for your character, you may opt to have the blacksmith craft you items. As with the stuff you find in the wild, the magic properties on gear he crafts are random, so there's often no guarantee that something he creates for you will suit you better than your current equipment, but odds are that sometimes he'll craft something that's ideal for you.

Unfortunately, you need to spend a good deal of gold on training him to level him up so that he can craft higher-level gear for you, and early on, it can feel as if you're sinking all your gold into this and reaping little reward. The rewards do come eventually, though, and all your characters in a given mode share the same craftsmen (the blacksmith and, later, a jeweler), so once the money is spent on training, you don't need to worry about spending it again.

The cycle of combat and loot and more combat is addictive, but without peril, it would eventually become unfulfilling. Thankfully, the hosts of hell become increasingly dangerous over time. Boss fights are numerous and frequent, and those that bring each act to a close can be challenging. They also offer more traditional action-game mechanics than the series has seen before. An early boss charges into walls, for example, leaving him stunned and giving you a chance to attack safely.

After you complete the game on the normal difficulty setting, you can continue on to nightmare, which is much more than just playing the same game again against more resilient foes. Nightmare changes things up by giving enemies powerful new abilities and placing challenging enemies in places where they didn't previously appear. Conquer nightmare and yet another, even more challenging difficulty becomes available. Whether you want a relatively easy, rewarding experience that you can pleasantly click your way through or an incredibly stiff challenge, Diablo III has what you're looking for. And for that added element of risk, you can play in Hardcore mode, where death is permanent.

Each class has the offensive capabilities to take on the forces of darkness alone, and the three AI companions you can choose from offer a helping hand and a sense of camaraderie to solo adventurers. But joining with up to three other players makes for a far more interesting dynamic. Freezing enemies in place when you're playing solo as a wizard is useful, but when doing so aids a team of players who are working together, it's much more fulfilling. Similarly, activating a mantra of healing as a monk just when your party is in dire need of a health boost is far more rewarding than just using this ability to save yourself.

Witch doctors can summon packs of zombie dogs. This is useful in battle and for scaring friends at parties.

It's extremely easy to invite friends to your game or to jump into their games, or to text chat with friends who are going about their own adventures in their own realms. But be warned: as players join your game, the forces of evil become more powerful, and if you don't stay close to each other and work together, you might find that enemies who were previously pushovers are suddenly quite dangerous. This added challenge encourages teamwork; a friend who joins your game and then runs ahead to take on monsters alone is no friend at all. For all its focus on teaming up with friends, though, it's odd that Diablo III doesn't have built-in support for voice chat. Speaking to your friends to coordinate tactics on the fly is helpful, but you'll need to resort to third-party software in order to do it.

Unfortunately, though Diablo III often feels like a well-oiled machine of adventure and reward, it does occasionally sputter. You're required to be online at all times, even if you're playing solo, so if you don't have a reliable internet connection, you simply cannot play Diablo III. The servers go down periodically for maintenance, so you might find the game unavailable to play at times that you want to play it. Additionally, even when the game is up and running, you may experience the rare bout of knockback lag. When enemies and attacks fill the screen (as they often do), you may encounter some severe slowdown. And for all its refinement, there's the occasional rough edge to the action. The monk can teleport to enemies and attack them, for instance, but this effect is abrupt and jarring.

There is unrest in the forest. There is trouble with the trees.

But these problems and frustrations are dwarfed by the pleasures Diablo III offers. There's a good chance you've played games a lot like Diablo III before, and at no point does it dare to surprise you by tinkering with its tried-and-true formula. But it creates such an enticing world and offers up such enjoyable abilities that it makes that formula feel fresh again. You may ultimately be victorious at vanquishing the forces of hell, but if their true mission is to give you a compelling reason to sacrifice sleep as you keep clicking your mouse into the wee hours of the night, then they have won a decisive victory.

More GameSpot Reviews

as its own RPG, and not a part of the diablo series, I really did enjoy Diablo 3. However, as a potential sequel to the absolute revolution that was the Diablo series, sadly this disappoints. too many beloved things from the previous games have been strangely altered or dropped, leaving this title without the feeling of freedom in character design that helped make Diablo 2 shine.to clarify, I am referring to skill setups and play style customization, as opposed to changes in character look, which Blizzard seemed to focus on very heavily.

The reduction of options and play style setups was disturbingly limiting, due to (among others) the fact that instead of being able to choose my own path and style of play for skills from 3 skill trees, I was stuck with the 1 set path that specific character could use and had to modify my own personal preferences to adapt to the skills I was given.

In addition, the stat system was also a huge detriment to choice in advancement, as it set you with 2 character specific stats and did nothing for the other 2.this was a sad replacement for the standard 5 point skill system that allowed so much customization and control over character development. Now i have to resort to finding stat bonuses in items that could better use other effects.

Now as i said, in its own right, this is a good game that deserves a playthrough. However, the level of actual choice in how I preceded was a staple in my Diablo experience, and no amount of monsters or loot can replace the freedom that Diablo 2 had given me. and in that sense, Diablo 3 is the exact opposite of what we wanted from Blizzard. true followers of the series wanted a true sequel, and sadly, what we got was just another RPG, unconnected but for the name and the bare bones.

Just finished it on normal and I won't be playing it again anytime soon ........ People who like this disgrace of a game are obviously new to diablo ..... Coz real Diablo fans know that this game is rubbish. And it was so easy that I never had to use a single potion while playing with the monk the entire game ..... and I never died .... except once for bad internet connection :) ... This just proves the point that games are now made stupid to appeal to a broader audience the game was stripped of some of the most important RPG elements that previously defined diablo ... anyways ..... My honest opinion ... newcomers will love it .... old fans like myself will hate it .... it's your choice ...

It is funny reading some of the comments below. I've only just bought it. I have played maybe half an hour of Diablo I and due to out of date graphics it made it hard for me to care.

I knew the game probably wasn't going to be brimming with enthusiastic people. I knew that the auction house is looked on in disdain by most but I played the demo and found it really fun.

Since buying it all of my other games that I bought on Steam on the summer sales are abandoned at the road side. I am so addicted to this it is untrue.

Yes the loot drop system is kind of annoying and the abundance of really rare items on the auction house kind of takes the edge off of the possibility of finding 1 of 5 of the rarest items to grace the game through chance alone.

But you don't need that stuff to enjoy the game for what it is. It is an action RPG and it is epically fun. What more do people want? Games are supposed to be fun, if anything a decent story would make it more awesome but even without I still love it.

Best game I've bought since Bioshock Infinite and I must say it ranks better for me personally than most of the games of last gen.

@Dannystaples14 agree i played this on launch and i dont get the hate on this since i spent a lot of hours playing this when RMAH was not around, with the people only whining on how hard the hardest difficulty was now that it was reduced they go jump to other things.

Though some really dont like the game i just dont see how so much hate it has

If I loved Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance (Gamecube) and Champions Return to Arms (PS2), would I like this? Not sure how this game is compared to the ones I have played and enjoyed for hours on end with friends.

I bought a game and I'm playing it for 200+ hrs. The game is never ending..... With so many character/difficulty combinations it gets more & more addictive as you play it. Maybe D3 is not perfect and the developers created so much hype in pre-order, but it is DAMN GOOD if you're a real RPG fan. If anyone of you like flashy colors and childish games, then you should play Torchlight.

I don't know why everyone is saying that this game sucks or is a turd or what not... I actually like it very much. Why? Because: the gameplay is good, the story is not that short (keeping in mind that it has 4 difficulties), bosses are not that easy to beat and the ability of making money out of selling items is always appealing.

However, it also has some pretty bad aspects like PvP. But i am sure is going to get better in time :)

I would totally recommend this game :) Trust me. I have spent whole nights playing it and also made a pretty big amount of money from selling items :)

How the hell can the editor here post "Flexible Customizable character classes" as being a good point in Diablo 3???? There is no customization or flexibility, No uniqueness at all... Either Carolyn Petit is on Crack or she didn't actually play the game.. Or perhaps she was completely new to the genre and never played any of the Diablo clones or Previous Diablo Games that were 1000 times better than this nonsense... Yeah like Blackfrog says... Go play Torchlight 2 instead.. Never tried Path of exile but I may give it a shot, it sure as hell has to be better than D3

I'm sure most of you guys (or gals) know this by now, but just in case you don't; If you're upset with Diablo 3, then check out Torchlight 2. It's only 20 bucks and it's made by a few of the same people behind the first two Diablo's. It's more robust in every way, the only thing that might turn off some is the graphics don't look gritty like Diablo. It's more of a World of Warcraft type style. Still looks fantastic in my opinion, I just noticed some people complaining about the art style so I thought I'd address it. Anybody else playing T2? Thoughts?

I haven't been on D3 in forever, mostly cause the game is terrible. But i decided to go online just to see how many people where still playing, i checked my friends list which was massive, couldn't even count how many friends ( anyone I played with or traded with I added as a friend so naturally my list was pretty big) so I figured most of them were still paying right!?!?.... wrong, not a single person was play that steaming pile of crap. this just shows that 90% of the people that D3 after purchasing the game and playing it realized how terrible the game really was......

I've been a fan ever since the first Diablo came out and I can see where the hate for this game might come from (dumbed down, too colorful, levels don't get randomized as much as in previous games, atmosphere is not as creepy anymore as in previous games, real money in auction house yadda yadda), but all this doesn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying Diablo 3 nonetheless. I mostly play it with my life partner in co-op and we have a lot of fun killing demons together. :-)

Diablo 3 is terrible. The always online requirement and itemization to make the real money auction house a money-maker for blizzard killed the game. All my friends I know who purchased the game on release day are now saying they greatly regret purchasing it. I strongly suggest people stay away from Diablo 3.

I honestly dont understand the deal with this Diablo 3 hate, i have played much worse games, such as borderlands ( waste of my life) but i've always been a die hard diablo fan. I think the rating is well deserved and that the expectations did fall short a bit, some peoples expectations were too high to begin with and others are just steamed that they game isn't tailored exactly to their extreme preference. If you like it, awesome... if not stfu.

ok, i signed up to gamespot just to say WTF to this review. seriously 8.5???? id say 4 if i were in the generous mood.

<Start rambling>

to be perfectly honest, yes i was really hyped up about this game, practically preordered the CE soon as it was available for preorder then waited roughly another 2 yrs for its release. was then disappointed a few days into playing the game but told myself to give it a fair go and not base opinion on the hype. finally into inferno only to realise i need to stack all res on every gear piece to survive (no to mention the main stat/vit and MF as well to make grind worth the effort, so imagine the demand for such items). then came the kick in the nuts, item drops were "mostly" lower lvl than the current game progression, making them useless. but thx to my stupidity and stubborness, i proceeded to farm gold to buy from the AH. finally wearing gear that can only drop from act 2 onwards, im able to kill butcher without it being a zerg fest. then onto act 2 and im one shotted regular mobs.........i mean WTF, i can take 5 hits from butcher and not even one from regular mob act 2

my point: the design team for this game is retarded, game is designed to regress rather than progress as u play.

ofc this was pre1.03, but the time 1.03 is out, most have alrdy quit. (if the number of player per quest is any indication then the game has lost over 99% of players. there were 2k+ players per quest at launch compared to a max of 10 now)

<Stop rambling>

in short waste of money, but more importantly a waste of time, if u need entertainment, try banging head against wall, i did and found it more entertaining

btw i gotta commend dwringer for his continued and solo effort to support this game, if u guys thing Carolyn was paid for this review, then dwringer has got to be a full time employee

nc try blizzard! HOW MUCH U PAID TO REVIEW THIS THING WITH AN 8.5 REALLY!u know u might think we are stupid BUT WE ARE NOT THAT STUPID REALLY!game sucks! the end!blizzard is going down!they failed at diablo they will fail at wows new expansion ...i just hope sc wont get fucked up too.Btw gj to the one who reviewed this game ....u should be ashamed of urlef....hope u ll spend the money grabbed to review this in a good way

Diablo III sucks! I don't know what Carolyn is talking about. She obviously didn't play very long cuz it will bore you to tears in no time. Cluncky, linear and mind numbingly BORING! Nothing like the first two. Wish I hadn't wasted my money. The auction house is a joke. Spending money for virtual items? Rather have something in hand, thanks. What a joke - 8.5!!! MAYBE a 4.

I guess this is why there is no Half-life 3 people tend to burn a game to the ground if it is not as legendary as its previous part. So Valve dont do this to Half-life leave it you cant win this even the mighty Blizzard is down